The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.
HERBALS
THEIR ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION
A CHAPTER IN THE HISTORY OF BOTANY
1470-1670
CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS
London: FETTER LANE, E.C.
C. F. CLAY, Manager
Edinburgh: 100, PRINCES STREET
London: WILLIAM WESLEY & SON, 28, ESSEX STREET, STRAND
Berlin: A. ASHER & CO.
Leipzig: F. A. BROCKHAUS
New York: G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
Bombay and Calcutta: MACMILLAN & CO., Ltd.
All rights reserved
HERBALS
THEIR ORIGIN AND EVOLUTION
A CHAPTER IN THE HISTORY OF BOTANY
1470-1670
BY
AGNES ARBER
(Mrs. E. A. NEWELL ARBER)
D.Sc., F.L.S., FELLOW OF NEWNHAM COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE
AND OF UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON
Cambridge:
at the University Press
1912
Cambridge:
PRINTED BY JOHN CLAY, M.A.
AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS
TO MY FATHER
H. R. ROBERTSON
“Wherefore it maye please your ... gentlenes to take these mylabours in good worthe, not according unto their unworthines, butaccordinge unto my good mind and will, offering and gevinge themunto you.”
William Turner’s Herbal, 1568.
PREFACE
To add a volume such as the present to the existingmultitude of books about books calls for some apology.My excuse must be that many of the best herbals, especiallythe earlier ones, are not easily accessible, and after experiencingkeen delight from them myself, I have felt that someaccount of these works, in connection with reproductions oftypical illustrations, might be of interest to others. In thewords of Henry Lyte, the translator of Dodoens, “I thinkeit sufficient for any, whom reason may satisfie, by way ofansweare to alleage this action and sententious position:Bonum, quo communius, eo melius et præstantius: a goodthing the more common it is, the better it is.”
The main object of the present book is to trace inoutline the evolution of the printed herbal in Europebetween the years 1470 and 1670, primarily from a botanical,and secondarily from an artistic standpoint. The medicalaspect, which could only be dealt with satisfactorily bya specialist in that science, I have practically left untouched,as also the gardening literature of the period. Bibliographicalinformation is not given in detail, except in so far as itsubserves the main objects of the book. Even within theselimitations, the present account is far from being an exhaustivemonograph. It aims merely at presenting a general sketchof the history of the herbal during a period of two hundredyears. The titles of the principal botanical works, whichwere published